Bitmine keeps buying Ether as ETH outperforms Bitcoin

Bitmine Immersion Technologies said Monday it holds 5.79 million Ether, or about 4.8% of the cryptocurrency’s total supply, after purchasing nearly 10,000 $ETH over the past week.

Bitmine disclosed that about 4.9 million $ETH ($ETH), or roughly 85% of its holdings, are staked through its validator operations. The company projected annualized staking rewards of about $299 million once all of its Ether is deployed across its staking infrastructure and partner validators. The company’s crypto holdings, cash and marketable securities total $11.8 billion as of July 26.

The latest purchases come as Ether has outperformed Bitcoin ($BTC) over the past week. $ETH has gained about 2.4% over the past seven days while Bitcoin has fallen roughly 0.7%, according to CoinGecko data. In Monday’s announcement, Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee said the rising $ETH/$BTC ratio, which he described as being at a three-month high, signaled strengthening momentum for Ether.

Bitcoin and $ETH performance over the past seven days. Source: CoinGecko

Bitmine has built the world’s largest corporate Ether treasury, trailing only Strategy among public companies by the value of its digital asset holdings. However, Bitmine’s accumulation strategy has recently diverged from Strategy’s, which has paused Bitcoin purchases in recent weeks.

On Monday, Strategy announced it had raised $544.5 million through stock sales, repurchased $25 million of its STRC preferred shares and increased its US dollar reserve to $3.75 billion, while maintaining holdings of 843,775 $BTC.